Woke like Coleridge from the opium of sleep:
Flashes of glimmer
scales of colour
Slippery eels sinuous muscular lines of language
Lost in murky depths.
Sitting in dapples of sunlight.
Lost in the tree tops are the
Voices of doves,
Maybe angels
Or djinns
Blown in from the desert
Lonely,
After
So many endless years
Of pious
Rigid-backed denial –
The bitter tongues
Of the righteous.
So many pious years
In the dark cool cave before dawn:
Day by day
The moon is filling up
With tears.
Even with a thousand arms,
Kannon,
How shall you gather up
All the lost?
How encompass
All the bereft?
Things
Are moments
And cannot be prevented
From flying away.
Even the stars….
Even the stars.
This spring
Under the cherry blossom
Will gather the wan smiling ghosts
Once more.
We are dust
Held together by song.
Sing
Sing
Before the song is forgot.
The tongues of the djinn
Fading in daylight.
Muttering
Back to the cerebellum,
To practice cadence
And metre.
Voices in Arabic:
The wind as it dances and whips
Around tent wires and mast heads,
Aeolian harmony
Between knotted spirals
Dust devils
Sand patterns.
Well water
Cold night air
Crescent moon.
In Kuwait,
She said,
Every household
Had a musician,
Every one
A diver
For pearls
Of cool, iridescent
Beauty.
Oud in the shade of night fall……
